Martija, Nelykah Rianne P.

Uses and Applications July 27, 2019

Unit Operations 2 (Distillation, Screening, Diffusion) Engr. Efren B. Chavez

DISTILLATION

Distillation is a natural process using temperature variation to separate a liquid and one
or more other ingredients that are mixed together. Distillation is widely used in industries that
refine oil, desalinate water, create liquor, beer and wine, and produce many chemical products
used in homes and factories.

Distillation is based on the fact that different substances boil at different temperatures. If
you are distilling a mixture of three substances, you raise the temperature of the liquid to the
ingredient with the lowest boiling point. This causes that substance to vaporize and rise in the
container. You capture and condense it, by cooling, in a separate container. Follow the same
process for the other ingredients and you now have purified versions of the three substances in
separate containers.

Suppose you have used oil that contains considerable dirt. Distilling the mixture will give
you a container with purified oil, while the dirt remains behind.

OIL REFINING

When crude oil is extracted, depending

on where it’s from, it contains many ingredients
that require distillation in order for the refined
oil to be used in your car. Fortunately, the many
types of hydrocarbons in crude oil boil at
different temperatures and can be separated
from one another.

In other chemical processes, the various hydrocarbons can be taken apart or combined
to produce a variety of products, such as gasoline, plastics, jet fuel, synthetic fibers, crayons, tires
and kerosene.
Martija, Nelykah Rianne P. Uses and Applications July 27, 2019
Unit Operations 2 (Distillation, Screening, Diffusion) Engr. Efren B. Chavez

DESALANIZING WATER

Some geographic areas of the planet cannot

provide sufficient water to support life. Drinking
water can be supplied by distillation plants that turn
ocean water into potable water. The distillation
process is the same, although the method of heating
used to achieve boiling temperatures may vary. The
two main sources for producing heat are electricity
and gas.

It is possible for you to distill your own drinking water to remove unwanted chemicals,
germs and other impurities. However, distilled water will ordinarily have an unsatisfactory taste. It
can probably be bought almost as cheaply as the cost to make it yourself.

DISTILLED SPIRITS

Liquor, beer and wine, at some stage of their manufacture, will undergo a distillation
process to separate the final liquid product from the grains or fruits they are derived from.

OTHER USES

The cosmetic, and pharmaceutical, chemical and manufacturing industries depend on

distillation. For example, air separation technology can produce argon. This chemical is used in
light bulbs to protect the filament and provides the glow in florescent tubes.

Chlorosilanes are distilled to produce the highest grades of silicon that are used in the
manufacture of semiconductors, the basis of computers. Turpentine, naptha, phenols, toluene
and phytosterols are all produced through distillation. So is pyridine, used as a solvent and
waterproofing agent and in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and vitamins.
Martija, Nelykah Rianne P. Uses and Applications July 27, 2019
Unit Operations 2 (Distillation, Screening, Diffusion) Engr. Efren B. Chavez

SCREENING

Screening is a simple technique for

separating particles of different sizes. A
sieve such as used for sifting flour has very
small holes. Coarse particles are
separated or broken up by grinding against
one-another and screen openings.
Depending upon the types of particles to
be separated, sieves with different types of
holes are used. Sieves are also used to
separate stones from sand.

Screening plays an important role in food industries where sieves (often vibrating) are
used to prevent the contamination of the product by foreign bodies. The design of the industrial
sieve is here of primary importance.

Screening is also the first unit operation used at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs).
Screening removes objects such as rags, paper, plastics, and metals to prevent damage and
clogging of downstream equipment, piping, and appurtenances. Some modern wastewater
treatment plants use both coarse screens and fine screens.

SIEVE ANALYSIS

Sieve analysis is an analytical technique used to determine the particle size distribution of
a granular material with macroscopic granular sizes. The technique involves the layering of sieves
with different grades of sieve opening sizes. The finest sized sieve lies on the bottom of the stack
with each layered sieve stacked above in order of increasing sieve size. When a granular material
is added to the top and sifted, the particles of the material are separated into the final layer the
particle could not pass.
Martija, Nelykah Rianne P. Uses and Applications July 27, 2019
Unit Operations 2 (Distillation, Screening, Diffusion) Engr. Efren B. Chavez

Commercial sieve analyzers weigh each individual sieve in the stack to determine the
weight distribution of the particles. The base of the instrument is a shaker, which facilitates the
filtering.

Sieve analysis is important for analyzing materials because particle size distribution can
affect a wide range of properties such as the strength of concrete, the solubility of a mixture,
surface area properties and even their taste.

DIFFUSION

Diffusion is net movement of anything (e.g., ideas,

ions, molecules) from a region of higher concentration to a
region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient
in concentration. The concept of diffusion is widely used in:
physics (particle diffusion), chemistry, biology, sociology,
economics, and finance (diffusion of people, ideas and of
price values). However, in each case, the object (e.g., atom, idea, etc.) that is undergoing diffusion
is “spreading out” from a point or location at which there is a higher concentration of that object.

A gradient is the change in the value of a quantity e.g. concentration, pressure, or

temperature with the change in another variable, usually distance. A change in concentration over
a distance is called a concentration gradient, a change in pressure over a distance is called a
pressure gradient, and a change in temperature over a distance is called a temperature gradient.

In medical field, the following can be applied using diffusion:

Diffusion imaging
Diffusion imaging was used in application to stroke. Indeed, diffusion imaging is the
earliest and most sensitive method in diagnosing stroke (< 1 hour). It manifests in the acute phase
as a drop in ADC translating an ischemic cytotoxic edema. It is also used to date the stroke event
and to distinguish between acute and subacute strokes.

Diffusion imaging also participates in diagnosis in different categories of brain pathology:

Martija, Nelykah Rianne P. Uses and Applications July 27, 2019
Unit Operations 2 (Distillation, Screening, Diffusion) Engr. Efren B. Chavez

 Tumoral: cerebral lymphoma (reduced ADC), epidermoid and cholesteatoma cysts

(hypersignal in diffusion).
 Infectious: pyogenic brain abscess (reduced ADC, providing differential diagnosis from
a necrotic tumor in which the ADC is increased), herpes encephalitis
 Degenerative: Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s disease (aid to early diagnosis)
 Inflammatory: MS
 Traumatic

Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Diffusion tensor imaging enables the in-vivo study of tissue microstructure. It gives
indications about possible nerve fiber anomalies in white matter or the spinal cord that are not
visible in conventional imaging. Fiber tractography is the only method giving an indirect, in-vivo
view of the nerve fiber trajectory. It can be associated with functional MRI to study the
interconnexions between nerve centers, used to analyze brain maturation and development
(myelinization), assist in the preoperative check-up for brain tumors (corticospinal bundle) or for
medullary compression. Diffusion tensor imaging can also be of interest in exploring Alzheimer’s
disease, certain psychiatric affections, inflammatory, tumoral, vascular, traumatic (irreversible
comas) pathologies or drug-resistant epilepsies.

Diffusion dialysis

It is an ion-exchange membrane (IEM) separation process driven by concentration

gradient and has been applied for separation and recovery of acid/alkali waste solutions in a cost-
effective and environmentally friendly manner. This review of DD covers the principles, models,
applications (strong acid/weak acid/alkali separation and recovery), and its integration with other
techniques, such as electrodialysis, ion exchange membrane-electrowinning, continuous
membrane extraction, vacuum membrane distillation, and ceramic membrane micro-filtration.
Notably, different factors including properties of the membranes, nature of the waste solution and
running conditions are discussed and correlated with the DD performances.